[CJO]

To clarify, as I was the person at the scoring table who found update number 4 for Jason Morella, Jason stated that "in the act of a blue and red robot touching, there is automatically 30 points of penalty, the only quesiton is on which alliance the penalty is assesed." As I stated in my letter to the FIRST rules commitee, this is the opposite of gracious professionalism, creating a situation where teams try to screw each other. In fairness to Jason Morella, he could not reach any of the rules committe on the phone, and made a judegement call.

THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, as Mark Leon said, the match should not have been called on the recollection of an example in an update to a rule (at the time, Jason could not find the printed rule). Furthermore, numerous testimony of people on the field indicated that the red robot was backing out of the loading zone at the time.

Therefore, yes, a judgement call had to be made, but the call should have been to replay the match, not to call the outcome of a regional.

I have a lot of problems with team 254 (among other things, during the playoff rounds I saw four NASA engineers working on their robot), but I do not believe that they had a hand in throwing the regional. Still, this was the wrong call. How do I know? In three years of FIRST I have never seen the arena boo. Not just one or two individuals, but hundreds of people. As I noted in my letter to the rules commission, this call was the breakdown of gracious professionalism.